Australia may lose most of its smart phone games, if the government's censorship plan moves ahead. Under the plan mature titles would be banned outright and developers would have to pay as much as $2,000 to have their games classified. (Source: Ken Irwin/Sydney Morning Herald)

Fallout 3 was among the popular international titles to be banned outright by Australia's censorship board. (Source: Aeropause)

In the land down under, if a 15 year-old can't handle a game, it's banned outright

Current Australian law
mandates that video game-makers go before the Classification
Board to receive a rating. As there's no 18+ rating,
any game that's too
explicit for a fifteen-year-old will be banned from sale
under the strict guidelines. Recently banned titles
include Fallout
3 (for
digital gore, sexual innuendo, and simulated drug use) and Left
4 Dead 2 (for
digital gore).

Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor, who
acts as the Commonwealth Censorship Minister, isn't satisfied with
the current provisions, though. He identified a loophole that
currently allows smartphone app makers to sell games without review.
Currently Apple's iTunes store, Google's Android marketplace,
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion's App World, and Nokia's Ovi
store all sell classification-free smartphone game titles in the Land
Down Under.

Under O'Connor's plan, smartphone game-makers
would be forced to pay between $470 to $2,040 USD in fees to get
their title classified. And they could see their game rejected
outright.

Many smartphone game-makers already operate on slim
profit margins per sales region, and are saying that if the plan is
implemented they will simply pull out of Australia's smartphone
market.

I
understand that there's certainly a desire to treat [mobile game
apps] in the same light [as PC-based games], but I think they're
built and consumed in quite a different way and I think iPhone games
may be a little closer to flash games on websites, certainly in some
cases where they're small titles rather than [blockbuster] titles
with large budgets and large timelines.

The sheer volume is
going to make it very, very difficult. The Classification Board
is certainly going to have to put on a large amount of staff to be
able to handle the iPhone app store, the Android [marketplace], as
well as other platforms like Nokia's Ovi and other emerging
platforms.

It's very difficult to define what's an app and
what's a game. What about if a utility has some kind of game as
an Easter egg? Does that mean that all of a sudden it becomes a game?
And what about desktop applications? They've never been classified.

Despite
being a proud Aussie, Edwards says that if the rules are rolled out,
he will likely pull out of the Australian market; after all, only 4
percent of his sales comes from his home country. Other game
developers, including other locally-based smartphone studios, are
promising to following in suit.

The government, though, is
likely eyeing the massive revenue it thinks that classification could
bring. Assuming a $2,000 classification fee, the scheme could,
in theory, rake in $345M USD from game developers selling products on
Apple's iTunes App Store. And that's not to mention revenue
from the Android developers and others.

Unfortunately, that
move may largely kill smartphone gaming in Australia, blocking out
all but the biggest titles. That would leave Australia's
200,000+ smartphone users lacking the entertainment enjoyed by their
more freedom-endowed colleagues elsewhere about the globe.

A
final decision was postponed at the May Standing Committee of
Attorneys-General meeting and will be delivered at November's meeting
on censorship and other issues.

A full list of Australia's
censored films, video games, and more can be viewed here (Note:
The list contains some "erotic" films, but no hardcore
adult entertainment. Nonetheless, it is probably not safe for work.)

"This is about the Internet. Everything on the Internet is encrypted. This is not a BlackBerry-only issue. If they can't deal with the Internet, they should shut it off." -- RIM co-CEO Michael Lazaridis